Polish secondary education faces an unprecedented wave of dismissals that will affect thousands of teachers throughout the country. Historians and catechestes were at the heart of the crisisresulting from overlapping educational reforms and increasing demographic decline. Chaos changes in the program base, including the abrupt elimination of the subject past and present (HiT) and planned cuts in spiritual hours, make a immense gap in the hours grid. School principals face dramatic elections, and many experienced educators have been able to say goodbye to work since September 2025.
The problem is systemic and affects the facility across Poland, from tiny agrarian schools to large schools in cities. The consequences of these decisions will be felt not only by teachers, but besides by students and the full quality of Polish education. The situation is alarming due to the fact that occupation instability and deficiency of long-term imagination of education improvement can discourage young people from choosing a teaching profession for years.
The end of HiT and the gap in the lesson plan. Impact of the Ministry’s decisions
The main trigger of the current crisis is the confusion around the subject History and the Present (HiT). Introduced only 3 years ago by erstwhile Minister of Education Przemysław Czarnek, it was to be implemented 2 hours a week in the first grade of advanced school and 1 in the second. However, the fresh ruling coalition made a swift decision to liquidate it, considering the subject to be overpoliticised. As a result, since September 2024 fresh vintages no longer learn HiT.
The problem is that the fresh subject – civic education – to replace HiT will only be introduced since September 2025. This creates an yearly gap in teaching plans and straight hits the wage of past teachers. Moreover, the introduction of HiT previously active a simplification in the number of hours of conventional past from 8 to 7 throughout the full curriculum. Now, after HiT's liquidation, these hours have not been restored, which further exacerbates the problem.
In practice, this means that in the school year 2024/2025 school heads have much little hours to distribute. In a facility with 8 divisions of the first classes, the failure may even be 16 lessons hours – that's almost the full time of 1 teacher. Directors are faced with a choice: to release 1 educator or cut down on all historians, leading to uncertainty and destabilization among the pedagogical group.
The crisis is exacerbated by the demographic. How do schools cope with the deficiency of hours?
Chaos software reforms are only 1 side of the medal. The second equally crucial origin is worsening than demographic. A systematic decrease in the number of students means a smaller number of classes, and thus a further simplification in teaching hours for teachers of all specialties. However, erstwhile this is applied to cuts resulting from changes in the programming base, the situation becomes dramatic.
This is perfectly illustrated by the example of the III General School in Łódź. In this school, where there are no classes with a humanistic profile, historians cannot number on additional hours from an extended cognition of society. Moreover, in high-profile elder classes, past is only realized until the mediate of the year. In combination with HiT's liquidation, the directorate faces the request to make highly hard staff decisions to supply teachers with the required wage of 18 hours a week.
The scale of the problem is straight proportional to the size of the school. In a tiny facility with 2 branches the failure may be small, but in a large advanced school with many classes the failure of hours is huge. This forces us to look for solutions that are frequently unfavourable to everyone. The simplification of jobs to fractional parts makes teachers request to search extra employment in another schools, which is simply a logistical nightmare and lowers the quality of their work.
Katechets next in line. Drastic cuts in spiritual hours since 2025
As hard as historians, spiritual teachers will shortly find themselves. The decision of the Ministry of National Education, from the school year 2025/2026 will be the lessons of religion limited from 2 to 1 hr a week. This means an immediate simplification of staff by half for thousands of catechists throughout Poland.
But this is not the end of change. The fresh rules introduce additional organisational difficulties. If there is even 1 student in the class who is not enrolled in religion, these classes will gotta take place in the first or last lesson. In practice, this may discourage any students and parents from participating in activities that take place outside the main classroom. For school principals it is another logistical challenge, and for catechists – the spectrum of further simplification of hours and occupation instability.
These combined factors – simplification of hours and organizational changes – make the catechete profession 1 of the most endangered in the education system. Many of them, like historians, will gotta look for alternate sources of income or completely reclassify.
Long-term consequences for Polish education
The current employment crisis is not just the individual drama of thousands of teachers. This is primarily a serious threat to the stableness and quality of the full education strategy in Poland. Loss of experienced specialised educators It's an erosion of human capital that will take years to rebuild. Young graduates of humanities and pedagogical fields, seeing chaos and deficiency of prospects, can avoid the profession of teacher with a wide arch.
Continuous changes and the request to adapt to fresh realities burden directors and teachers, distracting them from the basic task of working with the student. Energy, which should be devoted to improving teaching methods, is wasted on tackling human and organisational problems. In the long term, students who will be taught by tired and depressed teachers will suffer.
The problem requires urgent and systemic solutions. It is not only essential to stabilise the programme base but besides to make a long-term human resources strategy that takes account of demographic realities. Without the cooperation of the Ministry of Education with local governments and schools, Polish education can enter a period of deep crisis, from which exit will be highly hard and costly.
SEO tags: teacher dismissal, education improvement 2025, end of HiT, than demographic, Polish school, Ministry of Education, school work
Alternative titles:
- The end of HiT and cuts in religion. Mass releases will hit Polish schools
- Black screenplay for thousands of teachers. Government reforms mean a wave of redundancies
- Chaos in schools reaches the apogee. Historians and catechestes will lose their jobs from September
Continued here:
The government has decided. Thousands of teachers will lose their jobs through chaos in schools
